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freud interpretation of Dreams essay
contributions of sigmund freud in psychology
freud interpretation of Dreams essay
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The Interpretation of Dreams was written by Sigmund Freud in 1899 and was not received well by his colleagues. It took a number of years for the first printings to sell, which is hard to believe as Freud’s work is such a foundation of today’s mental health care. He was radical for his time. He spoke of his theory of the individual’s personality comprising of three parts, the id, ego and superego in psychoanalysis was comparable to Copernicus’ discovery of the Sun being the centre of the universe. It is now a widely used expression of modernity in the mental health field. This essay’s title highlights his own Copernican Revolution of a Freudian unconscious ego (the mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware) overriding the …show more content…
Two of these methods Freud names as condensation and displacement. Freud’s dream about his client Irma was a dream he analysed with a fine tooth comb (noting he also stated he was incomplete in his analysis). He found Irma represented people in his life: Irma, Irma’s friend, wife, daughter, self, patients, Dr M., and his friends . This is significant because it shows how “the elements formed into the dream are drawn from the entire mass of the dream-thoughts,” and Freud’s objectives for the curing of Irma “are hidden behind the dream-figure” projecting and blurring images onto her (Freud, 2008). My understanding of condensation here is that it is a collection of experiences that melt together and reappear in sleep or sleep like state to form a dream, and what is remembered and told the following day is the manifest content of said dream. The element of the dream represents many things and strands of thought. The latent content of this dream shows the client’s unconscious desires of not wanting to be noticed and possible resentment of her female figure. A desire to be physically different. Freud gives written example of this in both ways when referring to the client’s sequence of events which is followed by a dream of the same nature in the following
In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams serve as a gateway between a dreamers’ conscious and his subconscious thoughts (Mccurdy, 1946). Many ideas and information were condensed into a single dream. The dream displaced important parts and insignificant parts of the dream to confuse the dreamer. Certain objects would be introduced into the dream to symbolize the embryonic substance of the dream (Sprengnether, 2003). The dreamer would then comprehend the dream, thus generating the content of th...
I wrote this paper to get a better understanding of Sigmund Freud’s method and theory of dream analysis. The purpose of the paper will be to show the principals of Freud’s dream related theory that focuses on the physiology, interpretation, and psychology of dreams and to explain concepts such as latent and manifest content of dreams, the part of unconscious process, and the nature of dreams role in the determination of dream content. I would like to explore Sigmund Freud’s explanations of psycho-analytic and psychological theory and method to reveal whether Freud’s continuous revising to sexually based conclusions are able to support his own arguments. One of his themes was the amount of activity that goes on in our brains without us even realizing it is happening. Freud studied dreams looking for a better understanding of certain features of our personalities, mainly the features that developed into disorders and psychological problems. He believed nothing a human being did, could happen by chance, and every action, if it was big or small, was in some way motivated by the unconscious mind.
In 1900 , an Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud produced a work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, reviewing the idea that dreams allow psychic examination, that the dreams that are happening contain some sort of psychological meaning which can be brought on by interpretation. Freud says that every dream will release itself as a emotional structure, full of importance, and one which may be assigned to a designated place in the psychic activities. According to Freud's original thoughts dreams have two contents, a manifest content which is the dream that one actually experiences and a hidden content which is the meaning of the dream as discovered by interpretation.
From Sigmund Freud 's point of view all his theories were proven in this book. His first theory of Defense Mechanism was present when Jack’s mom used denial when she believed Jack was just a rebirth of her daughter who died during birth, so she didn’t feel the need to face the feelings of the daughter 's death. His second theory of Psychosexual Stages was present when Jack had a strong oral fixation of needing to “get some”, or else known as breast feeding from his mom, and phallic stage because Jack mentioned repeatedly throughout the book about his penis. Freud’s third theory was the Dream Analysis theory, because Jack later on in the book, experienced dreams that could be assumed to represent meaning to Jack’s real life and the struggles
A common definition of dreams according to “Patterns for College Writing” is “the symbolic representation of mental states”, but this sparse definition does not begin to encompass the complex mechanisms behind dreams and its effects on human culture around the globe. Dreams have long been the topics of folklore and urban legends. Since human beginnings, people have sought to uncover the origin of dreams. The ancient Greeks believed dreams came from the God Oneiroi. The Chinese believes that dreams happened when the hun or spirit leaves the body for the land of the dead. The Ishi Indians believed that dreams were sacred messages from the Gods. Yet even now, with the current technological and intellectual advancements, scientists and psychoanalysts have still to find the true reasons and meanings of these dreams. Some argue that dreams are the products of overactive subconscious minds while others argue that dreams are solely randomized emotions from the limbic system during sleep. Despite these contrasting theories, the truth of the matter is that the topic of dreams and the reasons behind them remain a mystery.
with egregious murder. Historically, death at the hands of a lynch mob would be reported in the presses as occurring “at the hands of persons unknown.” To Coates this repeated ignorance is intentional, as it is necessary to preserve “The Dream.” The Dream is a repeated theme in Coates writing. He argues that white Americans live a Dream where their successful lives are the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. He argues that in reality, the lives of white Americans are built on the back of African Americans.
It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream with understandable contents, is a substitute-formation that hides latent dream-thoughts, which are the abstract ideas in dreams. This translation of latent dream-thoughts to the manifest dream-content is defined by Freud as “dream-work”. Dream-work consists of certain types of transformation.
Sigmund Freud believed that he “occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning point, it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being in depth-psychology” (Jones). Psychoanalysis is a theory or therapy to decode the puzzle of neurotic disorders like hysteria. During the therapy sessions, the patients would talk about their dreams. Freud would analyze not only the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers) of the dreams, but the disguise that caused the repressions of the idea. During our dreams, the decision making part of personality’s defenses are lowered allowing some of the repressed material to become more aware in a distorted form. He distinguished between
Psychology, neuroscience try to explain them, 2012). He studied dreams to better understand aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. Freud believed that every action is motivated by the unconscious at a certain level. In order to be successful in a civilized society, the urges and desires of the unconscious mind must be repressed. Freud believed that dreams are manifestations of urges and desires that are suppressed in the unconscious. Freud categorized the mind into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. When one is awake, the impulses if the id are suppressed by the superego, but during dreams, one may get a glimpse into the unconscious mind, or the id. The unconscious has the opportunity to express hidden desires of the id during dreaming. Freud believed that the id can be so disturbing at times that the id’s content can be translated into a more acceptable form. This censor leads to a sometimes confusing and strange dream image. According to Freud, the reason one may struggle to remember a dream is because the superego protects the conscious mind from the disturbance of the unconscious mind (Dream Theories,
The mind is taking past elements and combining them into one; making a narrative from the id. With condensation of themes in a dream there is a result representing more than one symbol in the dream. Along with condensation in the dream-work process is displacement. Displacement has the power of thought through the latent content converting into manifest content. Freud defines displacement as, “It is the process of displacement which is chiefly responsible for our being unusable to discover or recognize the dream-thoughts in the dream-content…” (Freud 157). Meaning that when the latent content goes through the process of becoming manifest content, it hides from the ego what the meaning that the id is trying to make. Combined with condensation and displacement is then repressed, “…a casual connection between the obscurity of the dream-content and the state repression…” (Freud 164). Which leads to the full definition by Freud that, “Repression—relaxation of the censorship—the formation of a compromise…” (Freud 166), allowing the mind to subdue from the past experienced
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
Porter, Laurence M. The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Theories Revisited. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1987. Print.
Sigmund Freud created strong theories in science and medicine that are still studied today. Freud was a neurologist who proposed many distinctive theories in psychiatry, all based upon the method of psychoanalysis. Some of his key concepts include the ego/superego/id, free association, trauma/fantasy, dream interpretation, and jokes and the unconscious. “Freud remained a determinist throughout his life, believing that all vital phenomena, including psychological phenomena like thoughts, feelings and phantasies, are rigidly determined by the principle of cause and effect” (Storr, 1989, p. 2). Through the discussion of those central concepts, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis becomes clear as to how he construed human character.
They suggest that Freud’s observational data consisted of a patient’s disorders and the absence of conscious contents which would appear during the psychoanalytic talking-cure. With this fundamental basis Freud formulated a theory which leads to the belief that the repressed unconscious thoughts in essence caused the disorders. (Talvitie & Tiitinen, 2006) Talvitie and Tiitinen modify the historical realm of psychoanalytic terms of repressed contents and the meta-psychology towards the present era using neurophysiological and empirical studies of consciousness, which focus more on the dynamic systems approach and one’s consciousness, memory, attention, and self. (Talvitie & Tiitinen,
The longevity of success using psychoanalysis becomes a testimony to Freud’s in-depth study of the human mind. His forty plus years of work in the field were spent on the development of the main principles of psychoanalysis along with the techniques and methods used by the analyst. His work was furthered by his daughter and later adopted then adapted by Erikson. What seemed so revolutionary in the 1890’s and beyond has now become widely accepted by most all schools of psychological thought and its study.